He could have just kept his peace and enjoyed all the perks and privileges of being young (32 years old), intelligent, extremely wealthy, good-looking and a member of the House (and to top it all, single at that). Truly, he is Prince Charming in the flesh. To quote the first line of Daniel Padilla’s famous song, “Nasa iyo na ang lahat.”
Leandro Leviste’s political and business acumen must have come from his father, former Batangas Governor Antonio Leviste, although Leandro took whatever advantages his pedigree gave him and brought it to much greater heights. But then it must have been the crusading journalist gene in him, gotten from his mother (multi-awarded broadcaster Loren Legarda-Leviste, who is herself a legislator) that compelled him to risk it all.
Now, Lean Leviste is in the center of a storm. Whistleblowers are not looked upon well under the present administration and when the whistles they blow draw attention straight to the Palace, the dogs of war are forthwith unleashed upon them.
Suddenly, Leviste is a shady businessman (according to the government), and his sale of one of his companies (SPNEC) to Meralco is under intense scrutiny by the Ombudsman. Never mind that the transaction was vetted by both the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission and was a strictly private deal — the Ombudsman will poke his nose into it and in a very public manner, designed more for prejudice than probe.
I am sure the Ombudsman, if asked how he has jurisdiction over corporate transactions, will point to the franchise acquired by Leviste’s company from Congress in 2019. And as if on cue, Palace bullfrog Claire Castro joined the fray, accusing Leviste and his mother of impropriety.
Both the Ombudsman and Castro seemed to have missed the simple fact that the company sold by Leviste did not have a legislative franchise; it was another company with a similar sounding name.
Strange since both are lawyers and are thus charged with the knowledge of the doctrine of “separate juridical identity.” But we are quite certain the Ombudsman will justify such overreach by invoking his now notoriously dubious mantra of “Bend The Law.”
And notwithstanding that it was the incumbent President himself who sang hosannas to Leviste’s solar power project a few years ago during its groundbreaking, his energy secretary has — from out of the blue — meted out a P24 billion penalty on Leviste’s firm for supposed contractual breaches.
Never mind that the failure to perform was due to the Department of Energy’s own regulatory bottlenecks and the Great Filipino Crablet Mentality, with sour grapes throwing every roadblock — even illegal and extra-legal — in the way of a new player that threatens their old, obsolescent cash cows.
And the casus belli of all that? Leviste’s unstoppable crusade to get to the bottom of the so-called “Floodgate”, dubbed the biggest thievery in Philippine history. What particularly riles Malacañang is that Leviste was able to acquire — and publicize — something that was hitherto only mythical: the Cabral Files, a list of those who profited immensely from the hundreds of billions in flood control projects, the figurative smoking gun in a scandal that is likewise of mythical proportions.
But Lean Leviste, just like John Paul Jones, has not yet begun to fight. He is steaming full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes. Truly a Lean, mean fighting machine!